Completely Machinima Interview: Phil Rice, funny man (June 2024)

Tracy Harwood 00:44
Hello, and welcome to a bonus episode of the And Now Completely what

Phil Rice 00:54
Now Completely For Something Machinima

Tracy Harwood 00:56
that's the one. You know what I mean. Anyway, we are here to discuss a film that Phil has recently released in fact, on 17th of May. It's called Being Moses of vintage story machinima tale by zsOverman. Phil, your film. Tell us about it. Yeah,

Phil Rice 01:19
So Being Moses is a sort of a let's play but in character. That, that kind of the Let's Play are kind of gifts last. There's multiple layers of character, because, I'm performing it in character. But then he's role playing sort of playfully, as if he's, you know, Moses from the Old Testament. But then kind of gets really absorbed in the role and so there's this yeah, there's this weird weird layers of meta happening and not all of it was planned. It just kind of it kind of evolved that way as I wrote it. That wasn't the original intent was just a silly let's play with some, you know, some of my trademark religious sarcasm in it, and but it ended up ended up turning into a little bit more than that. So but that's that's the general premise. Is vintage story is a Minecraft like, survival sandbox, procedurally generated game, its got a little bit more complex crafting and Survival Systems than Minecraft does. That's what attracted to me originally. I've been playing it for, I don't know, eight or nine months now, I guess. And it's very enjoyable as a game. And yeah, there came a point where I thought it'd be fun to, to do something with this. But the the, the filmmaking tools, well, there are no filmmaking tools for it. So the tools within the game are not enough to where you know, I'm a little bit past, having a talkie in a game that doesn't have lip sync, you know, I just don't want to do that. There's people who will do that. And that's fine, but I just didn't want to do that. So I thought, well, if I'm going to do anything with the game like this, it needs to be probably needs to be let's play in format that gives me a little bit of artistic freedom for it to still look like a game that deliberately so so that's that's kind of the thinking that went into it. It was originally planned for a 10 minute video and and yeah, when once I got to actually writing it, it stretched out in some longer and incorporated some different music and stuff. So it was it was a lot of fun to make. And yeah, so yeah. Well,

Tracy Harwood 04:06
I haven't looked at the game. And I hadn't even heard of this game. Because I was thinking what what, what is Vintage Story referring to this, that kind of the Moses thing. But when I was looking at it, the game, as I understand it is actually inspired by the Eldritch or horror themes, which is a board game that draws on Lovecraft, and depicts supernatural and kind of otherworldly entities and places and events. The Eldrich, as I understand it being a group of cosmic monsters created by Erebos to twist the bodies and minds of living organisms and distort all of reality of the physical universe. And then I was thinking, well, actually, I think you've probably you've probably captured the essence of that in in this? In this sort of? You know, I'd say it's a let's play, but it's a parody of a Let's Play. Yeah. And you you've kind of deliciously twisted all these things together. Which, which I think is brilliant. I mean, obviously you've, you know, the Minecraft s nature of it is, I mean that we've seen, I mean, we've seen some really clever Minecraft inspired films. I mean, the one that comes to mind is that we reviewed one a few few months back, and we were, which was by Squared Media, I think it was called

Phil Rice 05:50
about the other one that was made in Blender. Yeah, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 05:54
exactly. And then we also took a brief look at one that was a portal, you know, sort of a complete overview of Portal with Minecraft characters, which, which also was, was really quite clever. So I think Minecraft is a really interesting way of, you know, presenting characters, bizarrely, where you can still kind of develop the essence of the character without actually the detail of it, which is, I think, I think, fairly astonishing, to be honest. But what you've said, what you've pulled off here is a parody of Minecraft, let's plays with contemporary news, with reference to old movies, and I and when I was looking at it, I was thinking, Well, you've got a bit of the old 10 commandments in here. And because of the voice that you've you've used to portray this character, it actually just sounds to me a little bit like James Stewart in How the West Was One. You know, that kind of farming?

Phil Rice 07:01
I have been complimented on my Jimmy Stewart impression. Yeah, well, you You've

Tracy Harwood 07:05
definitely got that in here as well, which I think that was that was brilliant. And then is there a bit of a Noah's story in here as well, you know, the bunny bashing sort of stuff that you do. And then you also kind of have this sort of kids TV reference in there, you know, the the trumpet voices, I can't even remember what the shows were that used to speak with, with trumpets brilliant, in the way that they did it. And moreover, what you you know, even though you've got all these kinds of hints of other things that I could see in it, the thing that stands out the most, of course, is your unique humour. And your own work, because we've talked about this many times in terms of some of the other words that you've done your own kind of relationship with, with religion, all of that melded through this, which was, which was really, you know, I thought it was very cleverly done. Very entertaining. I must admit, I watched it more than once. Probably, I'm on third or fourth or fourth, I think now, watching it, it's just getting funnier each time I watch it. There's so many layers to it. Um, you set? I guess, really? What are the what I wanted to ask is, when you when you do these kinds of works, what is the relationship for you between the script and the game that you've selected? Have you got a have you got a connection? In terms of, you know, you sort of pick the game you you enjoy the game, and then the script comes to you? How do you do it? Well,

Phil Rice 08:48
I mean, this is, that's hard to answer because this is this is the first time that I've done this particular kind of combo. This this for lack of a better term character. That is the narrator in this evolved in the the fake you know, the tutorial videos, the master toots, tutorial videos. I've never given him a name and I don't intend to, uh, he never says his name. But he's this strange mixture of like a dad joke wrapped in it. He doesn't know how much he doesn't know kind of person and yet he's still on the internet, trying to teach people how to do things. So be just the idea of that in this era of everybody's a freakin educator now, right? Everybody's an expert, telling you how to do everything and I thought well, some of these people are and then did you know that then you just lean into it with Okay, so full on parity. What if this guy's just a complete buffoon? He can't get he can't get anything. Right he mess up every detail. Almost without exception, every historical reference or pop culture reference is wrong a little bit. And yet he just keeps blowing right through just oblivious and I thought okay, that's there's some humour potential there. There's some recurring jokes that this guy that I incorporated into his routine. One of them is that's become my favourite part of playing that character really is. Goodness years ago, 20 something years ago. I was I went to, to Disney to Epcot centre with my parents. This was some summer in between, you know, either in between years at university or afterwards or something, but we all just went there as grown ups and enjoyed Epcot. And we were eating at this restaurant and right near it was a resort called the Polynesian resort. And so I just turned to my mom and just says, You know what Polynesian means. And there's no, which my mom is a wordsmith. My mom is like, you don't want to play boggle with my mom, like, she will just kill you, you know, it, but I thought, I bet she doesn't know what Polynesian means. And the truth is, I don't know either. But I know what I'm gonna say. And so as always, this means many nations. And she just, she did a spit take. And that was born at that point, I thought, okay, that's going in my little notebook. That's, that is funny that can, you know, that's a good joke. I've kept a file for years on, if I ever have the opportunity, or get the guts to stand up, you know, that that's where I'll, I'll start, start from with my material. And that went into that file. But it's just stuck with me. And every once in a while, I'll see a word with, you know, some mono poly or mono or something on the front of it, some suffix? And just think, okay, that could be, you know, and so this character, of course, doesn't know anything. So he doesn't even mess up the hard words. Like, no one knows that. Polynesian means many islands, but that's what it means. But the reason that no one knows that is because nations isn't a word in our language. Right. But, you know, people know what monotheistic means. So anyway, that's where that joke evolved from. So I just basically, just as I'm writing, I look for opportunities for that. And there's several other little just repeating things, you know, slightly cutting off the edit of a word, you know, editing just a little too sloppily. There's just something funny about that, if it's done, right. You know, starting off with a lot of people don't know that. Like, you know, again, it's this guy who knows nothing, but here, he's gonna teach you about something, right? And then and then what he states is demonstrably and obviously wrong. But but he just keeps going, you know. So that's the premise. And I was using it for these tutorials, as just a way to kind of exercise and get that, get that character on a, on a footing to where I knew how to how to work it, you know, it's like a marionette or something. And so yeah, then, after I did the tutorials, I thought, Well, what do I do with that now? I've built this thing, this this person that I think is funny, you know, by the end of that series of all the tutorials, and then the corrections and all that stuff, I thought, okay, I know how to be funny with this guy. Now. Now, what do I do? And the idea of more tutorials just didn't seem interesting. And it's not a very wide audience for that, you know? I mean, how do you even I can only imagine what a nightmare it would be if I tried to hire somebody to market my work. Like how do you market okay, this is a tutorial made by an idiot. It doesn't teach anyone anything useful. It gets everything important wrong. sell that, you know, Well, isn't

Tracy Harwood 14:26
that what TikTok is? Well, yeah,

Phil Rice 14:29
but they don't know it. Yeah, I'm doing it on purpose. Right. So and, and, and, you know, on tick tock, they can get away with that because they're, they've got an existing fan base somewhere, or they're really good looking, or any other thing that I'm not so it's like, okay, I don't know how to sell this. So I thought, well, then I'm just going to have fun with it in the way that I want to and I thought, okay, let's play would be interesting with this guy. And so that's That's the whole seed of the idea is just let's just think about some interesting games to let's plays as, and I watched a guy on YouTube. What is it? What is his name? Kevin? I can't remember his YouTube name now. But Kevin is his name. It's not grey still plays. He's somebody else I've watched. Oh, I can't remember the guys name Kevin. It. He's Irish. Very heavy Irish accent I believe. If I know how to identify, right, anyway, he does. Let's Plays that kind of lean in that direction. And oh, there was one video that we reviewed on here. The one where Keanu Reeves abducted the guy in the sense. Yeah. And that he's kind of playing it as if he's a character, right? Because we talked about the character the character is this psychopath? Yes, that's that's burning answer with this magnifying glass. So that that was. So that was an inspiration as well. I thought, well, what if I took that general proposition, but really just fully committed to it, of just, I'm going to do this, let's play as a character. Not as me not as occasional jokes or stick. But the whole thing is from that character's point of view, this idiot that I've built, that gets everything wrong, that yada yada yada all these characteristics, and he's going to play a game. And what does he do there, of course, he's going to tell other people how to do it, right? Because he thinks he knows what he's doing. He's going to be wrong about everything. And so he will, for example, put pit kilns to cook his pottery in his wooden home, and then leave them for the House to burn down. And anyone who's played the game, will find that really funny, I think because that will really happen. That really does happen. Like I did that to myself. I rage quit after doing that. Because there is no, it's it's not a hardcore game. If you die, you come back, but there's no restore from Save unless you're specifically going out of your way to do that. And I I played the game for hours, and hours and hours, and gotta finally got a house and all this stuff. And I went and lit a couple pit kilns indoors, so the rain wouldn't put the water out. And it burned the whole house down because I hadn't learned at that point, how to put out fire. So burned my whole house down, burned, everything that I had collected, all the metals, I had in mind, all my tools, everything that really happened. So I thought, well, that's going in there. That's That's funny, you know. So, and I enhanced it with some effects, some very poorly, kind of humorously badly executed, effect overlays of fire and smoke and stuff. If you watch it real close to motion tracking is like, I know how to do that better than that. But I wanted it to be rough, just as inept as everything else this guy does, right. So I left it, I did it the way that I used to before I know how to do it right with DaVinci is I did it the way I did in Vegas, which was just You just manually tried to keyframe it, and it never works out. Right. Frank Fox and I used to laugh about that all the time. Because he he did, he did quite a bit of manual motion tracking in his film, screen scenes. I don't know if you remember that. It was before morning, run amok. And he did a bunch of effects where there was something else on the movie screen. And you can see it like jumping as the cameras moving. It's like not lining up and stuff. Oh, he beat himself about that so much. But I was like, oh, that's part of the charm. So anyway. So that was that was the notion is, is to just so you're asking about process, and basically it came down to I came up with that idea. That was the only ideas here's the idiot, this is the character. And now I decide on the game and I decided okay, this game has has the most promise I think to do something with and so then it just took playing the game, which I'd already kind of been doing. But then I was playing it but all the while looking at it with a totally different set of eyes. All right, all right, what are some opportunities for you know, things that will happen to him. And then the writing came, you know, then then it starts with an outline. Just a bullet list of the major events starts typically with three or four. You know, the major turning points of the story what's going to happen, okay, and I knew okay at some point He's going to, you know, get killed by a bear. At some point, he's gonna burn his house down. And so there's, you know, and then then I just flesh it out from there into finer detail on the list. And finally, I just actually write out the script, the script is completely written out. Like, it's not I don't I don't improv that at all. Oh, wow. Wow, it's all it's written in screenplay form. Basically, I don't think I use the actual format, because it's just me, but it's in a Word document that word for word, it's, and then I perform it. And then I capture footage. So this is different from a lot of the order of events that when I'm making a film, and I clone or something like that, or when I did movie storm, that's not the order of that things typically would go but I don't capture a single bit of footage until it was already written. And it was actually already performed. Like in the timing that I wanted, other than there may be some places where there would be extra space for something to happen when I'm not talking. But the cadence is all already there. And so then I put that on the timeline in the video editor with no video, just audio, and start visualising what needs to happen, then there's kind of a what do they call it? Storyboard of sorts. I'm, I'm a terrible drawer. So I don't typically do actual storyboards. But I'll do it. I'll do a note taking version of storyboard. Because I can visualise it. I'm really good drawer up in here. I just, you know, not not here. So yeah, so that's kind of the way it went. And then as it was going through that writing process, it was only when I got to the part of actually writing out the actual script, which I did in about a day is I started to visualise something different for thee, I didn't exactly know how it would end, I kind of loosely thought he's going to be on this, this, you know, kind of vision quest and you know, goes up to the mountain and thinks that he's found God, but then it's just a bear. And there's catastrophe, and it won't end dark. He's not going to be, you know, a crumpled corpse on the bottom of Cliff. But it'll just kind of meander off at that point. And that'll be it. But when I actually went to get writing in, I thought, Oh, wait, this could be interesting as like a post glued. Because I'd gone through that whole thing, and only really given a taste of that Lovecraftian mode that the game will go into. Which if you don't know that, that basically, that end sequence with all the weird visuals and the Lovecraftian imagery of the gears and the monsters and all that that is all in game, there's no post, well, there's a little colour correction. But that is all in game. That's a real event. It's called a temporal storm, and it will happen in the game from time to time where you will It's like another dimension is bleeding through and there's these creatures and weird visuals and it's very dangerous. Yeah, became is really weird like that. So. And I thought, well, I didn't really get to show any of that. And I really wanted to, and to have him kind of be freaking out thinking it was the end of the world. That was ultimately how I was going to show that is he thinks it's the the foretold apocalypse, right? It's the Book of Revelations. It's that's my thought, no, what if? What if he has like this old school? And I mean, really old school

Phil Rice 24:04
religious experience, something that defies explanation, something that when people study accounts of that nowadays, they can't help but wonder were hallucinogens involved, you know, because ancient people experimented with that stuff. Big time, right? So when someone had this encounter with, you know, with the other, you know, was what was that? And, and it's not repeatable. So it's not a science experiment. You can't repeat it. You can't make it happen again. And you can't the person can't really ever describe what happened. I thought, what if I could somehow try to give him that? At the end of his rope right after all his efforts are done and his flippant approach to the stories and I'm just role playing this this very serious profit, very highly revered profit. I'm just flippantly just role playing him And then oh, I think I've found it. And it ends up. It's just nature. And it's all a ruse, and it's a disaster. And then everything's taken away from him. And so he's sleep deprived nutrition deprived. He's essentially, he's in the desert, as so many apparently ancient people, that seems to be where they, what they did to go encounter God is go out and deprive themselves of moisture and nutrition and put themselves in the heat. And then they have this experience, right? It's that's not just Judeo Christian religion, that's all over the world. There's accounts of things like that. So I thought, what if we brought that upon him except it's not a desert, it's he's frozen. He's starving. He has everything that has been taken away from so he's emotionally breaking. And we give him that experience. And I thought that the advantage of the way that vintage story presents that Lovecraftian world is it's so weird, and so nonspecific and so abstract, that it'll leave it open to interpretation, that it doesn't have to be interpreted the way I just said, where this, that he came back and just having been broken by his own failure. God confronts him. Right. I don't know if you're, you're probably not familiar with Carl Bart, but the theologian, early 20th century, he talked about, that God is historically God is, is one who confronts us. Not not someone out there waiting to be found, but he actually comes at you, you know, kind of, you know, maybe not even in a way that makes you certain that he's friendly, you know, but he comes for you. So I thought, okay, let's play with that. And, but at the same time, if we don't say anything, if we don't have him speak one more word after that experience, then somebody could watch it and think that he just had a nervous breakdown, or that he was hallucinating, or that it was Aliens, or that it was Lovecraft, or whatever, and none of them would be wrong. If I don't say anything. So that's why the ending ended the way that it did in this like, Cooper 2001 thing where it's like, what the f did we just see? And then it's over. And you don't know what happened? You know, there's a baby above the earth of the what, you know, this isn't on that level. Obviously. I'm not that arrogant, but it just that was that was something to aim that is an ambiguous a deliberately ambiguous ending that was inspired by certain specific things but wasn't insistent on on being a specific interpretation that was important to me even though this whole the whole thing has a tradition rooted in. Well, mostly Judaic references. I think I didn't really reference anything New Testament at all. I don't think it was all Old Testament prophets. Moses, Jonah, like you said, Noah is alluded to, but never really, I don't think directly referenced. And then of course, Moses himself, there's references to parts of his story, that my guy gets universally wrong and or, or just inappropriately oversimplifies. He killed a guy, you know, that's a true reference put, it's like, you know, you don't say it like that. Right. So yeah, I don't know. It's a

Tracy Harwood 29:04
it's one of your more crazy.

Phil Rice 29:08
Yeah. Yeah. It's really has a crazy element to it. But this is more leaning into that. Yeah. And I don't know. And part of me also wanted to see can I do religious humour that religious people would enjoy to, which means not being bitter in my approach to it, not being deliberately offensive. This is gonna offend some people, and anybody who takes it real seriously will get offended, but it's not intended to if it's not being wielded in that way, you know, I wanted to do that. And I think, you know, part of it is because I'm changing. I'm evolving. By in my attitudes and opinions on this, and I haven't lost my snark, by any means, and I've still got, you know, I still feel like somebody's got some, some splainin to do. That's kind of my my, you know, religious bent, but yeah, I don't know. I've always thought that there's a lot of humour in, in and around these ancient stories, the Bible in particular Bill Cosby who nobody's even allowed to mention anymore but he he did some routines that were just timeless and hysterical about you know, Adam and Eve and some of the, you know, these early mythical or or historical or whatever you want to interpret it characters archetypal plus acing? And yeah, so yeah, that was that was the intent is, is it's kind of mixed, right. But yeah, I just had so much fun making it and ended up it won't be one of the most watched things that I've done. But it's it's, it may be one, it may be one of the things I'm most proud of making because I think I don't know can I say this that like what I commented on the business film this month that it what I appreciated about it and enjoyed about it was seeing somebody were there humours firing on all cylinders, you know, where it's just, it's working. And I feel like if it's not inappropriate for me to say this, I feel like in this my sense of humour. It just worked. Like it just everything just seemed to work. It's exactly what I wanted to convey in terms of laughs and mood. And honestly, even if nobody but you and I laugh, it's enough. I mean, I made this, I made this movie, for the same reason I make most of the stuff that I make. And definitely for the reason that I make the music that I make. It's because I make the music that I make, because it's what I want to listen to. And I can't find it. And I make comedy like this, because it makes me laugh. Like I was just, there was times when I was just in tears laughing at this. And it's nothing to do with ego. I feel like that the humour in this is in some way. It's found. You know, I found humour in this. I didn't create it so much as I found it and figured out how to frame it and prop it up. But it was there, you know, these these funny things to be said about these things was there. And I just I found it.

Damien Valentine 33:04
I guess I look at it as a fellow creator, I get where you're coming from. It's not an ego thing. It shows you're emotionally invested in your film, if you're having the desired result as you're making it. And this one is obviously a comedy. There been a couple of times where I've done some dramatic moments, I thought this is really hard to do, because it's affecting me. And so it's not like I said, it's not an ego thing. It's you know that you're putting everything into your creation to have the reaction that you hope to get from watching it. Yeah, so yeah. Well,

Phil Rice 33:39
and it's not that I don't make stuff for an audience because obviously I do or I would just be labouring away in a cabin somewhere and never and people would find this after I died. Right. So it's not that I do want it to be seen. But I'm just not. I've decided to not be emotionally dependent on whether or not lots of people see it. Right? I just can't handle that. You know, if I if I evaluated what I'm doing based on that barometer, I would quit. I'd be so discouraged. But I do this, because I love it. You know, I love that if I were the only one that got to see this or me and one other person were the only ones that got to see this, because I would want to see at least one other person laugh right. Which Thank you, Tracy. Thank you You know what's funny? I'll just say that there's a couple people that aren't that have nothing to do with machinima that I'm close to that I thought sure. This would really make them laugh. I got nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I mean, I got it. It's all by text. So how do you rate it but I really thought They would just go on and on, or call out specific things that they found was funny. And they didn't. Like one of them just says, Oh, that's funny. That's it. That's it. That's all I got. And it's my tech. So I didn't even get I injected the tone into that. So it's like, dammit, you know, but again, I'm not doing this for them. It was just something that okay, if if this makes my theology professor from college, who I'm still in touch with, it's retired. It's got a great sense of humour. I thought this would really there's stuff in here that would really make him laugh. I can see him laughing. But you know, he lives in California, I live here. So I didn't get to see him watch it. Maybe it did make him laugh a lot. And he just decided to not be very verbose in his response. I don't know. But, you know, so anyway, yeah, you know, it's a weird balance, because you don't want to be just focused on yourself, it turns into, like this solipsism type of thing, you know, where it's, I'm not going to sit around pretending I'm the only person that exists or anything like that. But I guess what, just where I've personally come to with it is that, I know, somewhere out there, there's somebody who laughs at the same stuff that I do. And it's not necessarily my responsibility to find them to actually locate them. But let's go ahead and make the thing. And some of them are going to find it. You know, some of them already have, some of them are already subscribers, and, and that's great. But once you make something, be it music or video, when you make something, it's there, then, you know, barring the great, you know, collapse of civilization, which we may all witness but barring that, it's going to be there like going on and someone will be able to find this in a year or 10 years, hopefully. 500

Tracy Harwood 37:17
years. Yeah, the collapse

Damien Valentine 37:20
of civilization happens we have to do is write it down. And then 500 years, someone's gonna find it and take it very seriously. Yeah. This is gospel. This is what most this is a true story about Moses.

Tracy Harwood 37:39
And yeah, and even better, we could actually end up with a skippity Ricky. response to it.

Phil Rice 37:50
I I deleted I deleted generative AI Ricky I'm sorry,

Tracy Harwood 37:55
thank you. Yeah,

Phil Rice 37:57
I just couldn't I couldn't take it anymore.

Tracy Harwood 38:00
Yeah, he was pretty shocking he

Phil Rice 38:04
probably would have he probably would have really laughed at this generator vi Ricky would have really laughed at this I probably blew an opportunity there. I

Tracy Harwood 38:10
think probably the real Ricky will laugh at this as well. Listen, I've got just one if I'm gonna critique at all i The only thing I would really critique you on is you know what your description doesn't do it justice. Yeah,

Phil Rice 38:26
I want to do this. I think

Tracy Harwood 38:28
you need more to somehow to put a bit more into that. And I know what you're you know, I can see there's a deliberate strategy with what you're doing but I think because of the way these platforms work, I definitely think you need more detail in it a bit more detail in it now you know I do I

Phil Rice 38:51
need to I it's a bit of a story on it really not not my strong suit Yeah. As decent I think I am as a as a writer when it comes to doing captions for this or social media stuff or whatever I just like clam up

Tracy Harwood 39:09
you know what you could what you could you've got you said you've got a script for this. Why don't you put it into chat GPT and say write me a social media post for this see what you come up with

Phil Rice 39:26
that's worth a try to be

Tracy Harwood 39:27
absolute garbage but and it could actually come out with some I'll just

Phil Rice 39:35
I'll just sign it AI Ricky.

Damien Valentine 39:39
There we go. So I've got two questions as well. Cool. Yeah, go ahead. What did that Paul rabbit do to you?

Tracy Harwood 39:46
Oh my god. Both that was a moment you can never recover from you know that.

Phil Rice 39:55
Yeah, yeah. That was the that's like the stabbing moment in that wonder. Yeah. To me, oh, it's like, oh, he's not coming back from this.

Tracy Harwood 40:03
No, not looking at you and saying like, again.

Damien Valentine 40:07
Alright, so the second question is, are we going to see more of this character? Nine So playing Moses, but in future videos?

Phil Rice 40:15
Yes. Okay. That's

Damien Valentine 40:17
good. Yeah,

Phil Rice 40:18
cuz I haven't I haven't I think I've settled on the next. The next one is going to be a let's play. I think I've settled on the game. It's a lesser even lesser known game than this one. Oh, but who have it started production on it yet? I've played the game enough to where. And I've got a general outline. So I it's going through the same steps that this one did. But I've had some other other work and other other films that that I'm wanting to get completed. So but yes, definitely. Probably before this year is over. Yeah. There'll be one more look forward to that. Yeah. And the character is something my Yeah. I'm looking for other opportunities to do something with that because I think there's there's something to it. It's I don't know, they tell you to find something that's that's, that's unique. And I don't I don't feel like that that character is certainly not a conscious rip off of anything existing.

Tracy Harwood 41:25
Apart from that just hadn't come on. Carlton Heston, Charlton Heston even.

Phil Rice 41:32
Yeah, yeah. And I My plan is to keep them on named unless there's some compelling reason not to, but yeah, I think it's a, you know, it's a stick. It's a, it's a costume to put on, but I don't know, I put a lot of work into to kind of getting smooth with that character. And with that, that style, and yeah, I enjoy it. I enjoy doing it. So yeah, it will see more fun for sure.

Tracy Harwood 42:04
There's such irony in the character. I think he's brilliant. And he's, he's, you know, what, if you're not, there's been a lot of folks that would look at that character and not actually realise it's a complete parody. Oh,

Phil Rice 42:21
yeah, that's, and that's important.

Damien Valentine 42:24
I've been wondering if anyone's found those tutorials, and taking them seriously. Yeah. Well,

Phil Rice 42:30
from some of the comments, I think. Some half Yeah. Especially. I did syndicate some of those tutorials as like, like, I chopped up bits of them, and just tried them out on like, Instagram and Tiktok. and stuff. And yeah, on Instagram. Some of the comments are on YouTube shorts as well. Some of the comments. Were like, you know, what was that? They said? Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill Abraham Lincoln. Are you serious? Yes, yes. You know, it's something along those lines are Edgar Allan Poe didn't assassinate Lincoln or something? Oh, yeah. I think on that it's harder to maintain an audience or audiences or, or

Tracy Harwood 43:21
they want to be critical really?

Phil Rice 43:23
Well, and they're, and they're pretty, they're pretty smart. You know? I mean, there's a lot of stupidity out there. But audiences are pretty smart. And they I think they know it's it's a stick but

Tracy Harwood 43:35
it's close. It's one of them. Yeah, happy to be a happy accident.

Phil Rice 43:37
If if anybody thought that it was real, because I think then they welcome you've just become part of the show. You are now part of the comedy. You know, so I would welcome that. That'd be great. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 43:52
brilliant. Well, Phil, it's been delightful speaking to you. Thank you very much. This is a great film. If if you haven't seen it, please do check it out. Called Being Moses. We'll put a link on the on the show notes. Thanks for joining us. You've been listening to Tracy Harwood with Phil Rice and with Damien Valentine.

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